


with an uneven synchronicity

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Body Horror, Gen, Minor Character Death, Nonverbal Frisk, Spoilers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Frisk and Chara and players of all stripes.





	with an uneven synchronicity

**Author's Note:**

> _(the mechanized hum of another world_ – standing by the road with a handful of cinnamon)
> 
> each vignette features a different person as the player. some are benevolent, some are malicious, some are well-meaning but are struggling or have made big mistakes. because some vignettes deal with the aftereffects of a completed or aborted no mercy route and others deal with resets, this story involves depiction of trauma, abuse, and internalized victim blame.
> 
> tl;dr here we have a fic on Hashtag Little Living In A Video Game Things

**i. premonition of a google search for analyses in the near future**

“Frisk?” Asriel repeats slowly, his brow furrowing as he follows your fingers. Then he smiles, tremulous and tentative. “That’s… a nice name.”

Even you can feel the shock flow down the thick umbilical cord of determination that tethers you to Chara and them to… someone or something else somewhere far away.

There’s a faint ping of incredulity from Chara, too, who then starts laughing wetly.

“They—they’re just like Asriel, I think,” they say when you frown at them on the inside. “They thought you and I were the same. They thought when they were giving directions to me, they were giving directions straight to you. They can’t—they can’t see me, just like everyone else. All they can do is hear me.”

_Then…?_

“I don’t think they know I’m here at all.”

 

 

**ii. this ball’s been in your court for like an hour**

This is your third time watching Undyne slowly melt, and it never gets any easier.

You killed most of what you ran into, your first time through, and it churned in your gut ‘til it didn’t anymore, but even then Undyne’s death was so gruesome it made you gag. Here in a timeline where there is no protective blanket of LOVE between you and your soft heart, your breath is hitching and your face is sticky with tears and snot. You ought to be getting used to this, except that really it’s the opposite, and it’s worse every single time.

“Gross,” Chara says in the back of your head, their voice thick. Maybe they mean the snot dripping from your chin, but they also sound like they want to throw up, so you think they mean Undyne too. “I know I said I kinda like the way our dumbass pilot is trying to figure all this out by themself, but would it _really_ kill them to try and look up a hint or two for this part?”

It’s your third time through the underground, now. Only you and Chara and Flowey clearly remember it, everyone else just seems to get déjà vu from time to time. This is not as nice as it sounds: Once Undyne’s completely turned to dust you’ll be headed for Alphys’ lab, where she won’t have any idea that Undyne is dead because she didn’t watch your fight, and once you make it to the castle, Sans will notice you’ve heard his speech before and tell you off for being a bad person.

You killed most of what you ran into, your first time through; everything that didn’t actively run away or that there was no obvious option to spare, like Papyrus and Asgore. You thought for a moment that first run that Chara would relay to you the order to kill Flowey, and your hands shook on the knife Chara had supplied you with in that battle, as scared of that possibility as you were of Flowey’s threats.

But the order didn’t come, and Flowey challenged you to do it again without killing, and you went back. The first time the ACT button had been all but ignored, but the second time you and Chara and whoever they’re in contact with played telephone, and you figured out how to spare most of the monsters, only killing people for whom ACTing didn’t seem to do any good.

Toriel, for instance.

This time you figured out the trick to sparing her, and you were doing so _well,_ and then—

“They’ll—we’ll get it right eventually,” Chara says, and you sure hope so.

 

 

**iii. gotta trust in the universe to provide (death sometimes)!**

“I see,” Chara says, tone flat, when the order comes to have you dance along the edge of the room. “So this is what I was brought back to do.”

The dust is chokingly thick on your hands and Chara’s behavior scares you even more than your own growing apathy towards killing.

You don’t stick around to see how this turns out.

 

 

**iv. black eyes**

Chara explains things and jokes and encourages you, but when they think you’re not watching their expression goes totally blank.

Their act doesn’t work on you—where your minds are conjoined, theirs is perfectly flat and emotionless, and they know you know they’re performing their role of cheerful guide like reading lines off a script and they also know it freaks you out—but you don’t think their act is _for_ you to begin with.

“I do not understand at all what they think they are playing at,” they say to you of the one they take orders from. “It is as if they want to pretend that the last time did not even happen. As if they do not well know that this world is only a corpse I have breathed life back into on their orders.”

_So all of this… happened before?_ you venture, confused and timid.

Chara makes a long low noise. “We reset in a way that erases even your memories. Our previous actions could not be more different than the orders we are getting this time around. I highly doubt that you want to know.”

You decide that they’re right and you don’t.

“I do not understand _remotely_ what they think they are accomplishing,” Chara says again, and they smile in a way that does not reach their eyes. “I suppose it falls to me yet again to remind them that they are not above consequences.”

 

 

**v. i can’t sleep in this casino**

“Just get out of here, Frisk,” Chara tells you, and underneath the yawning apathy they sound tired, and that scares you more than anything. You’ve killed _one_ monster, the one single Froggit that attacked you when Toriel had her back turned, and that shouldn’t be enough to portend anything, but Chara makes it sound like it is.

“Leave, Frisk. You will not like how this ends. I have seen the same conclusion come about again and again. Unwaveringly the same result, tens of times now. It is better for you not to watch.”

_What—what do you mean?_ you ask them. _Why is it so bad that I shouldn’t even stay here any longer?_

“Ah. Well.” Feeling of a shrug. “It is your body, after all. And it is your funeral.”

 

 

**vi. a gentler(?) groundhog day**

“See you later, Frisk.”

A lot of things run through your mind when you turn to look over your shoulder to see Chara’s tired smile, like the devastation of _you’re not coming?_ and the resignation that you guess they wouldn’t since Asriel is staying too, and some very unsightly jealousy that they won’t choose you over him. You pick love and tell them, _I’ll be back to come visit as soon as I can, I’ll find a way to get the two of you out of here even if it takes a long time._

The tired smile goes thin. “No, it’s—I guess I mean, enjoy your freedom while you have it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

_What… does that mean,_ you say slowly.

They shrug, let their hands fall listlessly to their sides. “I mean it’s not up to me. I guess it could be worse, because it’s _always_ been this path and I doubt that’s going to change at this point. They might get bored one day and stop, which is fine with me as long as they don’t decide to do anything weird after they reset. None of the rest of you will be the wiser, unless this is the last time.”

_But you don’t think this is going to be the last time,_ you confirm.

Chara shrugs again. “When they’re satisfied, they’ll stop,” they say. “Maybe they have a good reason for what they’re doing. Maybe they don’t. I don’t know.”

 

 

**vii. but there’s no magic inside the moon it’s just a rock you can’t reach**

You’ve never heard anyone scream the way Chara is now. You think that if you could scream like that, maybe things would never have reached this point to begin with.

“What is your _fucking problem?”_ they rage at the other end of the red cord, to something you can’t see. “You have us reset _everything_ for _this?!_ I thought you were all right! I _trusted_ you!!! But no, you’re just as garbage as every other human on this godforsaken planet!”

Underneath their anger, though, is swirling confusion and doubt: What if they’re actually right, what if there is something else that they need to be shown, what if, what if. Like bright opalescent oil turning sickly swirls on top of a dirty puddle.

You cover your ears and close your eyes inside yourself, and curl up into a ball, resigned to wait it out.

 

 

**viii. are you there, player? it’s me, chara**

_Is it just me or were we dodging bullets just fine half an hour ago in Waterfall?_ you complain at Chara instead of listening to the usual encouragements to stay determined.

“Oh, you were,” Chara assures you.

_Then why are the instructions so slow and bad now?!_

“It’s been a lot longer than half an hour for them,” they say cryptically. “Try more like half a year.”

_How is that even possible?_

“Are you sure you want to know?” They wait, and take your silence for an answer. “Anyway, it’s not like dying’s actually permanent for us, it’s just a temporary setback.”

_It still hurts, though._

“Uh, I’m sure they’ll get back into the swing of things eventually.”

 

 

**ix. i ain’t gonna hang my head for them**

The further you get through the underground without taking a single life, the more emotionally brittle and unstable Chara seems to get.

“I just can’t understand,” they say to you for the millionth time. “What was the point of _any_ of this if they were just going to turn around and be a goody-goody anyway?”

_I don’t think they planned to do it like this,_ you tell them. _I bet Sans just got through to them in the end. They didn’t keep trying to kill him, right? They just started over. I think they must have learned their lesson and now they’re trying to be better._

“Sans got through to them? By playing a bad prank and a silly BGM and telling them to ‘get dunked on’?” Chara scoffs. The feel of them in your head is like a cat with all its fur up at different angles. “They went to all the trouble of showing me that everything’s even worse than I thought and that only power matters _after_ all, and then it turns out that nope! They were just yanking my chain, and I’m an easily-led gullible _idiot_ who’s morally bankrupt enough to _believe_ that.”

_You don’t have to be mad at yourself either._ You don’t think they’re actually going to listen to you, but it’s worth putting it out there, you hope. _You were confused and you trusted them. It’s not your fault if that trust gets taken advantage of._

“It’s my fault if I ought to know better,” they snap. “It’s my fault if I’m just no good anyway.”

_I don’t think you’re no good. And you don’t have to forgive them if you don’t want to. They’re doing their best now, but the way they hurt you last time doesn’t go away either._

“You know, you’re allowed to be mad too,” Chara says, surprising you. “At them _and_ at me.”

You’re not sure what to say to that.

 

 

**x. probably some sort of charity run or something**

“Saving over Asriel’s file seems like the only way to defeat him… but having never saved before, you lack the power to do that,” Chara says, loudly enough to be heard clearly over the roaring waves of nothingness into which Asriel has cast you. Then, quieter, only clear in your head, they add: “Not like it’s _your_ fault our player is either a masochist or is showing off, though.”

And even here, at the end of the world, frozen and helpless, you can’t help but giggle.

**Author's Note:**

> a key for what types of runs are happening in each vignette:
> 
> i. true pacifist on a first run, blind playthrough, unspoiled  
> ii. repeated neutral runs, blind playthrough, unspoiled, trying for true pacifist now without a walkthrough  
> iii. no mercy on a first (and probably only) run  
> iv. soulless pacifist run  
> v. only no mercy runs, multiple true resets  
> vi. only true pacifist runs, multiple true resets  
> vii. no mercy run after a true pacifist run  
> viii. player came back to a true pacifist save they haven't touched in months  
> ix. true pacifist run after an aborted and reset no mercy run  
> x. no-save true pacifist run
> 
> the title of iii is a quote from [this](http://www.maximumfun.org/adventure-zone/adventure-zone-maxfuncon-east-live) adventure zone episode.


End file.
